I graduated from the University of Washington in 2008 with a degree in Business Administration (Marketing), and immediately entered the professional online marketing world. I founded AudienceBloom in April 2010, and have since become a columnist for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and Huffington Post. My personal blog is located at AudienceBloom.com/blog. I guest lecture for marketing classes at the University of Washington, and currently reside in Seattle, WA.

Is Bad Grammar Killing Your Brand?

Everyone who has texted or spent even a tiny amount of time on popular social media sites knows how the internet has seemingly lowered the standards of spelling and grammar across the board. Random typos, acronyms, and memes prevail across platforms – and we are all constantly at the mercy of auto-correct regardless of how carefully we type.

With everyone from your boss to your grandparents using abbreviations such as “u” for “you” and “tmrw” for “tomorrow” and internet terms like lol and btw, it may seem like the internet, texting, and social media are changing the way we use language. And as some may be asking themselves, has the internet killed grammar?

“Internet Speak” And Its Impact On Digital Brand Management

For business owners, advertisers, and marketers, the effect of the internet on grammar and spelling reaches further than many expect. It goes beyond personal communications and being slightly irked at random typos and errors that one may come across while perusing the web; how a brand communicates and connects online is a reflection of the company itself, and that includes using certain types of languages on various social and digital platforms.

Therefore, while social media is certainly a channel where companies can make themselves more relatable and personalize their customer service process, many brand managers are not empowered to do so. After all, they’re responsible for upholding brand standards, even if that means using language that’s more formal than the typical tone of the medium.

It’s Just Human Nature

In addition, while typos are common and generally forgiven on personal social media accounts, emails, or blogs, brands and corporate or professional accounts are generally held to a higher standard. And after all, many people tend to judge others by their spelling and grammar quite harshly – a behavioral pattern that will definitely affect their perception of the brand or company whose presence that you are responsible for maintaining.

The differing perspectives of various types of professionals regarding internet-speak can be informative as well. NPR’s article on the views of English scholars versus corporate types is quite telling. While there are many experts who feel that language is evolving, there are just as many who purport that basically “just because everyone else is jumping off the grammatical bridge, why should you?” And depending on your perspective, they have a good point.

Grammar Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Changing

The reports of grammar’s death have been greatly exaggerated, to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain.

The growth of the internet means that everyone is publishing more content than ever – brands included. Accordingly, the sheer volume of social media posts, articles, blog posts, images, videos, and more mean that there’s that much more potential for error. In addition, there’s much more pressure to generate large volumes of content that not only echo the established brand voice, but also fit the tone and overall voice of a given platform – which can often mean participating in memes, using popular or trending hashtags, and writing with the type of shorthand or internet-speak that’s common on each social network.

Granted, many consumers or current and potential customers will either forgive or not even notice an error, especially if it’s minor. However, errors – especially if they’re not clearly intentional like using a common abbreviation or acronym – can damage your company’s credibility in ways that may not be immediately obvious to you as a marketer.

Speaking Your Audience’s Language (Regardless Of Grammar Rules)

It’s important for community managers, content strategists, and anyone else who’s responsible for generating digital content to understand the general tone, etiquette, and social customs of a given online community, and participate and post accordingly. In some cases, this may mean using appropriate acronyms, slang, memes, and other types of language that fit the style of the platform.

After all, participating in an open, honest way and showing an understanding of how one’s target audience prefers to communicate and interact online can go a long way towards developing a connection, and this type of communication may have a much greater long-term impact than a simple ad, giveaway, discount, or other quick and easy tactics.

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Mr. Demers point about holding businesses to a higher standard of grammar than what occurs on social media (as it should be) is on the money. Marketers bend the rules of grammar everyday in order to reach their target audience. However, businesses that sell a product or service are wise to spell correctly and use the correct form of speech. It will be judged by customers such as myself.

Nowadays, social media has made abbreviations and misspellings (there is no excuse anymore for not spelling correctly, use your spell check) appear to be acceptable. It is not acceptable in a business environment. Nor should it be. Businesses are all about communication. When a business presents itself to a potential customer, whether in writing or in person, proper etiquette is to use the language as it is meant to be used. To devolve into slang or abbreviations shows poor taste and will leave people thinking you are uneducated. Use your slang when you are with your friends.

You knew you’d get my attention with this one, Jayson :) While the world at large may be more forgiving (or more inured) to poor grammar, I still hold that those who make the effort are significantly ahead. If you’re going to tell clients or employees what to do … not a bad thing to appear as if you have a wee bit of intellectual capacity of your own, I say… Thanks for this post.

Jayson: you raise some interesting issues and for the most part your thoughts are clearly expressed.

Have you read Sven Birkerts’ “The Gutenberg Elegies: the fate of reading in an electronic age”? It was published in 1994 and is a deep meditation on this subject. I would like to know in exactly which sense you are using the term “meme” as, judging from the Wikipedia entry, it seems like quite a broad concept. There are a few linguistic infelicities or, less kindly, outright grammatical and stylistic blunders that I would like to bring to your attention. “Public-facing communication” and “companies can make themselves more relatable” are awkward constructions.

Auto correct is a technology, slang is not. In section seven, “no one is immune from grammar errors” should read “grammatical errors” (you need the adjectival form). And, on a lighter note, how does one operate within a vertical? It sounds like fun! Auto-correct is a technology, internet slang is not. In the last sentence of section seven you omitted the word “are”.

The discussion could be framed within the context of levels of discourse: formal and informal. We all know what is appropriate in one context is inappropriate in another. The funny thing about language is that a knowledge of syntax and the basic grammar of the language is, for most users most of the time, operating unconsciously. Children can make themselves understood long before they have learned to diagram sentences. We all move between the two polarities of language. Educated and careful users of the language have definite social and economic advantages over as they are able to navigate all levels of the linguistic strata and aren’t confined to a sub group. Thanks for your thought provoking post.

Whoops! In the second to last sentence delete “over as” and substitute “in that they”. This “debasing” of the language can be seen less prescriptively as a dialect, and the more dialects, and languages we know, the better. You can’t really understand your own language unless you have learned another language.

I agree that in the digital age typos tend to more readily forgiven, however poor grammar is still a turn off. Due to the internet and online media messaging, we are forced to be more clever and less verbose. This often lends itself to internet slang, which I find acceptable given the right context.